Holi - Festival of Colors

"In India, Holi announces the arrival of spring and the passing of winter. The festival breathes an atmosphere of social merriment. People bury their hatchets with a warm embrace and throw their worries to the wind. Every nook and corner presents a colorful sight. Young and old alike are covered with colors (red, green, yellow, blue, black and silver). People in small groups are seen singing, dancing and throwing colors on each other." - Festival of Colors USA


This past weekend, our Signs of Love team decided to attend the annual Festival of colors in Spanish Fork, Utah. This has been something I have always wanted to go to but have never really had the chance, so you could imagine how excited I was! Travis, my brother and I all got plain white shirts and wrote positive sayings as well as #signsoflove on them. I thought writing it on my back was an awesome idea, until I realized I was going to be wearing a backpack the whole time...Haha. We decided to meet up with Carly and Sierra at Mickey D's for some breakfast before our adventure! As soon as we walked in, we had people asking us what we were doing in all white shirts with sayings. One person even asked if we were going to a rally. After we finished our breakfast, we headed out. Spanish fork is about an hour away from Salt Lake. As we got closer, we noticed that even the big signs on the freeway said, "Festival Traffic take exit 254." From that alone,I knew it was going to be busy!

When we arrived, we didnt really know where to go, so we just followed traffic. They had a bunch of indivuals charging for parking on their own land, since it was in farm country, Very smart idea! Luckily, the lot we decided to park in was run by Boy Scouts, so the money went towards their troop. Once we got out of the car, we were ready to go! The temple was located about a mile away from all the parking, so we jumped in with the crowd of white and proceeded to walk to the temple. Along the side of the road, there were locals selling water, candy, food, and even bandanas. One group even was selling the colored cornstarch, which is a no no. They will confiscate it at the gate if they see it,

I was under the impression that the color throwing was every hour. So, I guess in my mind I didn't think about people just throwing it randomly. Man, was I wrong! As soon as we walked in, we saw people covered in color! Then, I got my first hit with pink dust! It was on! At first, I was a little timid about throwing dust at people, because you never know how they will react...Everyone there was in such high spirits and happy, that feeling quickly disappeared. I was thanking people for throwing dust on me. Travis had a Free Hugs shirt and hugged well over 100 people. He even had a line at one point! 

One thing I thought was cool, was the fact that there was a llama farm! They also had a peacock farm as well. I work at a zoo that had free roaming peacocks so I am used to it, BUT they had soooo many, I couldn't believe it! They even had an Albino Peacock....that's just awesome!

Another awesome thing was the temple. I never expected it to be as old and amazing as it was, People were lined up on the second floor, throwing powder onto the crowd below. Even the walls were covered in colored hand prints.

Just on the opposite side of temple, was hoards of people lining from the steps all the way down the hill to the stage. When it was time for the group color throw, we didn't even bother getting stuck deep into the crowd. The color throw was amazing. They had the crowd count down from ten and as soon as you hit 1, you were surrounded by clouds of color falling down on you. Then faster than you know, the colors mix together, and it's just dark grey clouds above you, then poof! Gone..

We then just proceeded to walk around and throw dust at people. Especially targeting the color virgins in all white! Before we knew it, it was 2 o'clock! We had been there for 4 hours and had no idea!!! At that point, we all decided it was time to go home. Especially because around that time actual lines started forming to get into the festival. When we got there at 10, there were no lines. Lucky huh?!  

By the time we got home we were all ready for a shower and a nap! I hadn't even realized how sun burnt I got until I got home and showered haha.

The exhaustion from the day and the heat set in, and we were lazy bums for the rest of the night. Let's just say that night of sleep was AMAZING! I definitely want to go back next year! No doubts about that. If you have never been, I recommend you at least go once in your life! You wont regret it!